Has a man dressed as a woman ever come into a communal changing room with you or joined a specifically female group you belong to ?

[Rilkescat]

How common is it ? Not really referring to stories in the media but for everyday women on MN. FWIW I've never met a trans person that I know of, neither professionally or socially. I'm a HCP so meet alot of members of the public. None of my kids have friends that are trans nor do my friends have children that are either.
Loads of trans threads at the moment. No problem with that but just wondered if it really is that prevalent ?
Before I get flamed I'm not in favour of biological womens' safe spaces being open to biological men but equally I don't think that all trans people, especially trans women are necessarily sexually deviant or mentally ill.

Nope.

I wonder which facility my friend should use. He is bearded, shaved head, very obviously male, until he takes his trousers off…

So your friend is female @Gilead?

No he’s trans, has had breasts removed and hysterectomy. By the logic on here he should be using the female changing rooms etc, but I bet there would be trouble if he walked into them, bearded and balding and muscular as he is.

If there's a vagina in there, your friend is a woman.

But if your friend passes as male, the mens is fine for them, although they may be more comfortable in an accessible or private bathroom. Not the womans if they look sufficiently like a man to scare women and girls.

So yes, your friend is female @Gilead . Choosing to identify as trans doesn't alter your sex no matter what hormones or surgery you have. If 'he' wants to use the men's facilities that's fine, but using the women's isn't an issue either because the threat is no way comparable to that of a male person.

There probably wouldn’t be trouble - women and girls are conditioned from an early age not to pick fights with men as the chances are very high that females will come off worse. They will probably feel very uncomfortable but rather than openly challenge someone who looks male they will keep their heads down or simply leave until your friend has finished in the toilet - because of course, their complaints are worthless now - be kind and be quiet.

I’m sure your female friend with a male appearance will know that from experience and wouldn’t want to scare women and girls or make them feel threatened, vulnerable or uncomfortable. I would suggest the male toilets or the accessible toilet.

I don't really understand the relevance of the female trans identifying friend to an argument about men in women's spaces? She's absolutely no threat to men and would unlikely cause any anxiety in the mens facilities, mostly because they simply don't have the female instinct to recognise the opposite sex quite so easily due to not having evolved it over millennia for survival purposes. She isn't a threat to women either, because she is one, altho I doubt she would want to use the ladies either, because it isn't any validation and she probably remembers how unsettling it is seeing a male on women's spaces. She will have periods, understand female biology and the need for privacy and is unlikely to be making porn in the cubicles either 🤷🏻‍♀️

According to the Scottish government and Stonewall you don’t even need gender dysphoria to consider yourself trans (in that case what is the definition of trans?) so it literally opens up the GRC process to allow you to get a new birth certificate to anyone regardless of intentions or background.

I know some ‘old fashioned’ trans people who do not use women’s spaces.

I have been in a number of spaces recently such as toilets and changing rooms which have been made mixed sex (so they don’t have to deal with issues of people self identifying into the wrong space) and it was horrible.

Men pee everywhere, even in ‘posh’ establishments and mixed sex communal changing rooms are a horror.

There's often a misconception that the aim is to force transmen into using women's toilets. No, it's simply a wish to not have male people enter a female single sex space which may exclude female people from having any facilities in order to give the male person their freedom of choice from all the facilities. Because exclusion isn't ok, is it? Or is it ok if it's only happening to non-trans female people?

What female people with TQ+ identities would prefer to do is up to them - many seem to be sensitive to the needs and perceptions of other females. I will say that on first meeting a small, bearded man when I was alone in an outdoor space it took only the man smiling and saying hello for me to realise from face and voice cues that they were a transman, and I felt my entire body shift from the programmed alert of 'you're alone with a male in an unobserved spot, be careful' to 'this is a female, it's ok'. Wholly unconscious.

This is only about asking that female people's access and inclusion needs are met equally to TQ+ people's needs. Answers can be found that work for all. Female people are equally worthy of that care and consideration aren't they?

I’d just like to point out that those suggesting the accessible toilet as an option are in the wrong. We fought long and hard for those. They enable us to leave the house. And before you start saying well why is it okay for men to use women’s toilets, you’re fighting now, people may disagree with you but you’re having your own fight.

And we’re fighting long and hard for the right to have female toilets without the presence of men. If your friend has decided to look and live like a man then she has to accept all the consequences that go with that.

If your female friend has decided to utilise medical interventions to present a very male presence then that shouldn’t negatively impact women and girls on any way, shape or form. The men in the male toilets won’t bat an eyelid, Im sure - or perhaps they will and then the issue will really start to become important.

Couldn't agree more, @Gilead. No one who isn't disabled should use those set aside for accessibility. Identity is irrelevant. We are fighting now, but actually, women had to fight long and hard before. Google the urinary leash. Women had to fight to be able to leave the house too.

We’re still fighting to leave the house safely- and that fight will only continue as men are given legal access to our safe spaces.

If your friend doesn’t want to use the accessible toilets - and I understand that - then the men’s toilets it is.

@RinklyRomaine , I accept that women are fighting and that they have every right to, I remember a time when offices were designed with a ‘gents’ on every floor and a ‘ladies’ on every other floor. I know it’s been a long hard fight. This, for me, is one I’m unsure about and it doesn’t help when people quote Hitler at demonstrations as happened in Newcastle recently.

A gents on every floor? Not in my workplaces - it wasn’t the case in every office, as well you know.

You mean the big lie comment that one person made? Not people. Shall we also talk about the abuse, death threats, threats and actual violence, and the other actions by TRAs to shut down women’s voices, the legal access that men now have to single sex spaces, the fact that 1 in 585 trans men have been convicted of sexual assault compared to 1 in 2500-3000 men - and on and on and on? Just to give it a bit of balance.

I have been in a number of spaces recently such as toilets and changing rooms which have been made mixed sex (so they don’t have to deal with issues of people self identifying into the wrong space) and it was horrible.

I agree.
It's causing so many more bigger issues.
-Drunk men walking into a space where I'm the only female and I'm stood in the stall trying to work out whether I should woman up and confidently open the toilet stall door and walk out. Stop to wash hands or not?
-men not closing the stall doors
-drunk man who hasn't quite got the memo that it's a shared space demanding to know what I'm doing in the men's.

-two bathrooms, both down a set of stairs in an isolated part of a building. One labelled "urinals, handbasins, stalls", the other "handbasins stalls". This recreated exactly the same sort of environment in which I was assaulted as a teenager (except it was the downstairs of where I worked and everyone had gone upstairs - I never returned to my job) . There was nothing about that man a minute earlier that suggested he was about to do what he did. He looked just like any of the other men in the room upstairs. I can't know what sort of a man will walk into the toilets, though I suspect the none creepy ones will scratch their head a bit as my husband did and use the urinal one. Do I take my husband next time, leaving our drinks and coats and potentially causing anxiety for another women by him being there?
In the end I waited for another women to leave, hoping she was going to the loo and not for a cigarette and I explained I had followed her down because of the toilet situation. She kindly waited for me to wash my hands before going back up.

I have a transman as a neighbour. Freda went away traveling for six months and came back as Fred, it was obvious to me he was the same person but DH took some convincing. I'd had a baby while he was away and when I first saw Fred, he looked in the pram to see the baby and started scolding me for having my baby dressed in blue with a blue blanket. Apparently I'm cruel for assigning a gender using and using stereotypical boys colours on a male child.

Fred stomped off in a huff when I explained the baby was a girl, we kept the sex a surprise and since blue is my favour colour I bought lots of blue outfits - she looked adorable! Fred has not spoken to me or DH since and tuts loudly when he sees us in the street. There was never a cross word spoken before.

Not a communal changing room no. But was a store assistant in a high street chain and asked me if I needed help (as is normal for a store assistant) in the store's change room. I had twigged that they were male by then, so I declined. Usually if I need another size, I will ask if a female store assistant asks and am not so worried about them seeing me in state of semi-undress while they slip the item through the solid door or curtain.

After that day, I am very careful.

And I experienced a male sitting infront of the changing cubicles in Primark. I have complained and still get a 'we listen to everyone' email back. It was a store that had chairs in the corridor of the changing cubicles with curtains.

I was sitting and waiting for someone, and this male person sat in the chair beside mine directly in front of the cubicles. The woman in the cubicle directly in front had not closed the curtain fully and could easily be seen undressed so I quickly jumped up and closed the curtain.

You mean the big lie comment that one person made? Not people. Shall we also talk about the abuse, death threats, threats and actual violence, and the other actions by TRAs to shut down women’s voices, the legal access that men now have to single sex spaces, the fact that 1 in 585 trans men have been convicted of sexual assault compared to 1 in 2500-3000 men - and on and on and on? Just to give it a bit of balance.

Shall we talk about how far down the rabbit hole our politicians are, and how much misogyny they're handwaving away?

https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-grooming-of-holyrood/

Or start a campaign for third spaces to be created as additional accessible spaces.

Considering Sam Smith only had to say one thing one time to have an entire awards system rebuilt from the ground up, that the SNP and Libs/Greens/Labour are such vigorous supporters, and some extremely well paid (and tax paid) rich and powerful charities are involved, it wouldn't take long to achieve at all.

That would be an answer that would work for everyone.

Although you would then have to find a way to manage people such as India Willoughby, wellknown TW tv personality, who has tweeted before about when finding carefully provided gender neutral facilities plus a female only facility for female inclusion tucked somewhere else - has made a point of intentionally going and using the female facility and excluding those females on principle.

@Ereshkigalangcleg absolutely agree. I have the joy of living under the SNP govt and my female voice here is drowned out by male fragility and misogyny, thanks to the politicians here. Thank god for the Tories at the moment - and that’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

@nilsmousehammer a third space would be the most sensible approach, absolutely - although it should not be at the expense of women (our third space toilet at work was the women’s toilet until it was repurposed - go figure), nor should it become another TRA political football as I suspect it will. Not surprisingly, the TRAs are not exactly shouting for third spaces - their male entitlement shines through.

Has anyone added this website yet?

www.noconflicttheysaid.org

It has been so targeted by activists that I think many women are now too scared to add to it.

My teen's friends at 14 was 5 out 7. At 16 it is 2 out 3 (changed groups to a new group of just the three of them).

I believe that Marzipan's example may be more typical depending on the area and other characteristics of the group than you suppose.